New video series uses humor to call for California to ban fracking

Fracking rubs a lot of environmentally minded people the wrong way, with its use of toxic substances, its contribution to climate change, and its potential to pollute with air and water. This last issue, water pollution, has become even more worrisome as California’s drought drags on.

The video series is calling on California Governor Jerry Brown to ban fracking, while also bringing attention to the particular problems surrounding fracking in the state. For example, fracking disproportionately affects Latino communities in California:

Fracking also poses a risk to farming communities, which is bad news for all the Americans who get their fresh fruits and vegetables from California. In some cases, fracking wastewater is being used to irrigate crops, which has also raised questions about safety.

Full disclosure—Madeline Stano, an environmental justice lawyer at CRPE who appears in these videos, is a childhood friend and I think she’s totally awesome. Here’s what she has to say about fracking and climate change:

Banning fracking isn’t an unprecedented move. Vermont and New York have put bans on the books, and a number of other states are also considering similar laws.

To help further spread the word and support the campaign you can sign the petition and share the videos with your social media followers. While some of us may be suffering from crowd-sourcing fatigue, you can also put your money behind this cause by throwing a few bucks at the project to help put these ads on TV. The team’s goal is to raise $7,000 to buy ad time in Sacreamento, “where Jerry Brown can't ignore us.”